Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 24, 2023
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Nelson's Pillar was a large granite column capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson, erected in the centre of O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland, in 1809. It was severely damaged by explosives in March 1966 and demolished a week later. The monument was erected after the euphoria following Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It proved a popular tourist attraction but provoked aesthetic and political controversy, and there were frequent calls for it to be removed, or replaced with a memorial to an Irish hero. Nevertheless it remained. Its destruction just before the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising was, on the whole, well received by the Irish public. The police could identify no one responsible; when in 2000 a former republican activist admitted planting the explosives, he was not charged. Relics of the Pillar are found in various Dublin locations, and its memory is preserved in numerous works of Irish literature. (Full article...)